Can Harper stoke fear and still woo the ethnic vote?

One of Stephen Harper’s most remarkable achievements in politics has been to navigate his way from the nativist, turban-queasy, anti-immigration policies of Reform to those of a modern party, supporting immigration and wooing the ethnic vote.

With his sidekick Jason Kenney scarfing perogies and papadums with equal enthusiasm, in 2011 Harper led the Conservatives to an even bigger victory among voters born abroad than he won among the general population.

To understand how significant this is, look south of the border. After their failure to win the White House in 2012, many Republican strategists worried that the party had a shrinking demographic base — essentially confined to American-born white Protestants. They urged Republicans to reach out to the country’s growing Hispanic population, many of whom shared the party’s values on family and free enterprise.

In that spirit, Marco Rubio, a Republican senator with presidential ambitions, urged compromise with Democrats on the Dream Act, which would have allowed many Hispanics who had arrived illegally as children to get permanent residency. His efforts were crushed by an anti-immigrant backlash in his own party, and his presidential aspirations were left in tatters.

So with his ethnic outreach, Harper has turned a trick that has eluded conservatives in the United States and elsewhere. Now we are about to find out whether the house that Stephen built here in Canada, including its immigrant pillar, can withstand the torque created by his “campaign of fear”, as his opponents have cleverly dubbed it.

And this is a campaign of fear. The government’s security bill C-51 is responding to genuine public concern about terrorism, for sure. But the Conservatives have worked hard to transform anxiety into something colder and darker:

The Conservatives’ Facebook page posted a meme of a supposed Al Shabaab terrorist threatening West Edmonton Mall. It was so similar to actual terrorist posts that some critics wondered whether it might not violate C-51 once the bill is passed.

Jason Kenney, of all people, tweeted a photo of Muslim women hooded and in chains, with a message about Canadian Forces fighting Islamic State. It seems the picture actually depicts a Shi’ite Muslim religious ritual. The Shi’ites and their religious practices are among the principal victims of Islamic State.

A Conservative fundraising email last week was titled, “Murderers in your neighbourhood?” Perhaps there are, but fewer than ever — given that the homicide rate is the lowest since 1966, according to Statistics Canada.

In another fundraising letter, the minister of immigration, Chris Alexander, said that wearing a hijab — a scarf some Muslim women wear that covers the head but not the face, a little like a nun’s wimple — represents a failure to embrace Canadian values.

The party may be consolidating the old-stock Canadian base that brought it to power in 2006. But it may also be turning off some of the new voters that lifted it to a majority in 2011.

All pretty unpleasant stuff. However, it does seem to have buoyed the Conservatives in the polls and the Conservative party in its fundraising.

But what does it do to the Conservatives’ ethnic outreach?

First of all, it’s important to understand that while the Harper government has had a generous immigration policy, its attempts to woo so-called ethnic voters have been narrowly targeted.

For a generation, the Liberal party floated on the votes of new Canadians to whom it appealed more or less indiscriminately with a combination of open-door immigration and a commitment to civil liberties. The Conservatives have tended to pick and choose.

In 2011, according to Ipsos Reid’s massive post-election survey, the Conservatives’ established a foothold mostly among the most well-established immigrants — those who had been in the country longer than ten years. The party’s appeal was apparently greatest among European immigrants, primarily Christians and Jews.

Many of these people are reasonably well integrated into Canadian life and now live in the suburbs — so they may not see themselves as the targets of the Harper government’s more acid tone of late. In fact, they may well share in the general panic about jihadi terrorists and urban crime which the Conservatives are stoking.

There is also some evidence that the Conservatives made inroads in 2011 among Korean and Chinese Canadians, as well as South Asians.

Still, the NDP seems to have won a plurality among visible minority voters in 2011. And even in their shattering defeat, the Liberals managed to hold on to most of the Muslim vote.

So one reading of the current fight over fear could simply be that the Conservatives are playing to their existing ethnic base while the NDP and the Liberals do the same.

But that assumes that immigrant and visible minority voters who are non-Muslim will take the generous view that the recent Conservative rhetoric is not directed at them. That doesn’t seem entirely likely.

Turbaned Sikhs, Lebanese Christians and brown-skinned Hispanics know full well — from looking south of the border, for starters — that when the mood turns ugly for Muslims, the racism that ensues doesn’t bother with fine distinctions. Visible minority voters are critical in many of the seats around Toronto and in the lower mainland of B.C. on which the next election may turn.

Even some Conservatives seem concerned about the tension between the party’s inclusive tone of 2011 and its nativist rhetoric today. The party may be consolidating the old-stock Canadian base that brought it to power in 2006. But it may also be turning off some of the new voters that lifted it to a majority in 2011.

This week, the Canadian Press unearthed a briefing note for a government MP that indicates the government worries its supporters might react badly to discovering how much it’s spending to resettle immigrants.

More dramatically, the Conservative MP and former Harper communications chief, John Williamson, embarrassed the party when he talked about unemployed white people being displaced by “brown” temporary foreign workers.

Stupid. Of course. Not just because it sounds racist, but because at least some of the “brown people” who vote will use it to connect the dots between themselves and Harper’s campaign of fear. That’s why several Conservative MPs criticized Williamson rather than close ranks around him.

Reputations hang on to political parties like original sin. The Liberals arguably ran a more fiscally conservative government under Chrétien and Martin than Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have done since. But the Liberals are still vulnerable to the charge of “tax-and-spend”.

The Conservatives worked hard over a decade to erase the stain of racism that attached itself to the Reform party. But it is resurfacing now, and that may have consequences that long outlast the election of 2015.

PaulAdams is associate professor of journalism at Carleton and has taught political science at the University of Manitoba. He is a veteran of the CBC, the Globe and Mail and EKOS Research. His book Power Trap explores the dilemma of Canada’s opposition parties.

Follow Paul Adams on Twitter @padams29

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

25 comments on “Can Harper stoke fear and still woo the ethnic vote?”

As Trudeau warned in his speech, this is the danger with a campaign of fear – you never know where it will lead. In the case of the Tories, it’s exposing the bigoted underbelly of a lot of its members. They’ve tried to hide it, but to anyone paying attention, it has been painfully obvious. Just look at the two-classes-of-citizenship act, the increase in deportations, the unconscionable time lag in allowing foreign spouses to come here or get work visas and health care once they arrive, the denial of health care to refugees, the groundless rejection of visitor visa applicants. Their anti-Muslim, anti-“brown” rhetoric is bad enough, but their actions speak even louder. I don’t know whose Canada this is any more, but it certainly isn’t my or my friends’ country any more, and we are not immigrants.

I agree Pat, all of these policies you’ve mentioned are pretty shameful.
Add the policy of making family class immigrants harder to bring over – like a ten year wait to bring aging parents – and I get the impression they think they’re being clever in making family-based cultures not want to come here any more.
Also the safe countries thing seems designed to have one goal: keep out Roma and Mexicans.
Despite the fact he has aboriginal MPs, Steve’s m.o. is pretty hostile to aboriginals as well.
So it’s a mystery to me why anyone would believe we’re being run by anything but the Reform Party.
I’m from B.C. and used to listen to their rhetoric in the ’90s, and I always heard the three enemies of “real” (?) Canadians – immigrants, natives, and Quebec, all had too many rights.
That fringe I believe has been given unrestrained power and has gotten drunk on it.
The muslim thing is just the latest link in a convenient chain of scapegoats for a group that don’t want people who are less likely to vote for them to have increasing numbers.

And if Harper and his ‘hoods’ continue then you comments should be the main topic around the GTA and other specific voter areas of contention. I lived in Alberta for 8 years and experienced first-hand the visceral anti-humane attitudes. After all the KKK ‘s main headquarters in Canada has been a main-stay in Edmonton for decades. Its become impossible to feel one could take a full-clean breath anywhere in Alberta as the minority that cared for genuine human values versus money via corruption became obviously, few and far between. I am hoping people in Quebec rally against these fear-mongering Charter false-value groups and their cowardly followers. Because as much as timidity has cost Canadians it could (and Harper will guarantee that it does) get a lot worse for a lot longer…..maybe a Canada in name only…If memory serves me right, there were a lot of powerful voices whispering how inevitable it is that the US takes over the resources of Canada—and we as taxpayers have subsidies these corporations to do just that, starting with our water–and viola –“Bob’s your uncle” and the main focus of the Trade In Services Agreement is (along with privatizing all within the public domain) to privatize all resources beginning with water (Californian corporations can’t wait).

Trudeau’s speech was ground breaking and powerful.
When strategists from both the NDP and the Tories rave about how “beautifully written{ it was etc…that says a lot.
Candians haven’t heard anything this honest, this direct and truthful in many many years.
The conversation has now changed, Harper be damned.
He was very obviously shaken by it. In fact, his whole gang looked rattled today.

They’re rattled because it caught them completely by surprise and it hurt them precisely in the area they are placing their re-election hopes. Then you have Blaney stumbling along and making ridiculous Nazi comparisons that just bolstered the Liberal argument for them. Keystone Cop stuff for the Cons today.

Isn’t it just a tad ironic that its a member of the the party that brought in all these “brown people” as Temporary Foreign Workers who’s saying that “brown people” are taking Canadians jobs. Lots of Canadians are brown. The issue is the TFW program, not colour.

Whities and Brownies = Backwards Society. Shameful that Canada is associated with this kind of rhetoric. Shameful to have people that think and talk like this having any kind of power at all. Can you imagine if they had total power. Is our PM in the same category as Williamson? After all the PM did choose him for his communications director and was seemingly happy with him. Bet he doesn’t want this kind of communication getting air time eh.

I read that for the first time in our history we have more temporary foreign workers than immigrants.
Stephen can pose in front of multi-ethnic walls of people to create that inclusive image, but his true policies are: less refugees, less immigrants from family-based cultures, no Mexicans or Roma, and more people who will do low-level jobs that have to leave like the Chinese who built the CPR.
It appears that Stephen has taken personal control of immigration to prevent less-fortunate voters from choosing another party in an election.

Well! Things sure seem to be evolving quickly this week! Finally in a good way.
And now CBC has announced the terrific appointment of Shad to host Q.
What has become a healthy acceptable part of the Canadian vernacular…a “brown person”…
has captured a huge audience and let’s hope he just flourishes!
It will be interesting to see how our press deal with this.
The Globe’s Houpt has a very tepid piece today.
Don’t we just love it when the stars start aligning in a positive way for all of us as we move forward
to rid ourselves of this dark oppressive regime?!
PS This is authored by “a blonde person!!!”
We should really have fun with this….gray people, red people, all of us need to start laughing
and using the absurdity in a powerful way!!! We should never let it die out. It’s just too precious!

Reminds one of how Tim Hudak, the previous Ontario PC leader, had run around during an election campaign with cutouts of brown people who he claimed were receiving preferential treatment through “affirmative action” of the provincial Liberal government. Ontario still has a provincial Liberal government while Hudak had been thrown under the bus by his own Party, some members of which apparently could not even wait for Hudak’s political body to be cold before they started fighting for his post. Let us hope that Canadians generally are as smart as Ontarians generally. :)

Oh, I truly have great faith in Canadians and their deep passions for this country and for
truth and justice.
Just reading your post, it’s almost hard to comprehend that Hudak behaved so so
poorly, but he did. And it’s ALL Koch brothers’ strategy we know.
Thank heaven people are getting up to speed on these men and their insidious
meddling in Canadian politics and in our everyday lives.
Harper is even looking more and more like the Koch brothers every day…very creepy.

If social assistance weren’t a provincial affair, his next step would be to require mandatory drug testing of all recipients, just like the Koch-engineered scheme in Flori-duh and other states. There’s a lot they’ve got waiting on the back burner should they get a majority. And none of it good for Canada.

Key would be a first measure of making dissent and verbal thoughts translate into a directed charge of intent-‘to a possible act of terrorism’–We had a brief and disgusting example given to us, when the small birding group in Ontario was sent an intimidating letter from the CRA, questioning their tax status —another was the spying on charities suspected ‘of being political’ which in ‘brown-shirt’ Harper speak is critical of conservative ideological mandates.

I can’t see C-51, and perhaps C-44 as well passing a Charter challenge but I could certainly be wrong.

I am also bothered that, right now, both opposition leaders seem to be saying they would not repeal but merely amend this bill. Why not initiate a new bill, based on a thorough review of what is needed, what has been tried, and what conditions on the ground really call for. A bill that would not leave so much unknown and open to the interpretation of a hell-bent, PM-endorsed police state.

Boy, it sure would be a sight to behold ….. Kenney “scarfing” perogies and papadums, presumably to “scoff” them later in his room, eh, Paul? Lol

Seriously though, while there would always be a few immigrant Canadians who would be drawn to voting for the Harper Cons, the majority I believe are smart enough to see through the strain of racism attached to the Reform Party and would not vote for the Harper Party.

I suspect Harper was more throwing red meat to his base than trying to win ethnic votes with his disgusting plays at inflaming the passions of, presumably, narrow minded and gullible voters..

And on that note, Kenney cannot afford to be scarfing much more food!
He’s blowing up like the Goodyear blimp…along with many of the Harper gang.
What on Earth do these people eat, really?
Maybe this is over the top, but the way a person takes care of their body and their health
speaks volumes.
Isn’t that what we teach our young people?

So Harper deciding to update the citizenship test pass rate from the former Liberal designed 12/20 questions correct or a joke 60% passing mark to the more adequate 15/20 or 75% target makes him a racist? the fact that Harper feels potential Canadian immigrants should be required to prove they are capable of communicating in either one of Canada’s official languages? oh god forbid we make immigrants prove they can speak.. the horror!! somebody get the Charter their rights are being violated! Thankfully Bill C-24’s full provisions are finally coming into full effect this July, no longer is Canadian citizenship handed away like a cheap paper…changes to the system include potential immigrants having to stay in Canada 4 of 6 years and having to actually prove that they are in Canada while their application is processed. Before it was just 3 of 4 years and they never even had to prove they were in Canada!!!! also changes to the knowledge and language tests, the old language and knowledge tests were required for citizenship-seekers between the ages of 18 and 54. Now, those aged 16 to 64 are required to take the tests and the most horrifying detail of all is that former applicants used to be able to use an interpreter to help them, no longer is the use of an interpreter permitted to help them pass the language tests, shocking that at one time Canadian immigrants had that luxury. Then Canadians wonder why its so hard to place an order at fast food restaurants. The times they are a-changin’.